What is DNS and how does it work?

What is DNS or Domain Name System is a hierarchical and distributed name management system for computers, services or any resource connected to the Internet or a private network? It is responsible for locating and translating to IP addresses the addresses of the websites we enter in browsers. In other words, it is thanks to him that you can type: www.getgoguide.com in the address bar of the browser, when you want to access our site, instead of entering a sequence of numbers, points and letters.

But how so?

There are two ways to access a web service: by your domain name, our famous “www”, example: www.getgoguide.com.or by the IP address of the servers on which it is hosted. One of the main functions of DNS is to make your life easier the moment you want to visit a website. Imagine if every time you wanted to open a web page, you needed to type in the browser the sequence of numbers corresponding to it? It would be hard to keep all these numbers in the memory, would not it? Because DNS does the hard work for you, translating the words that make up the URL to the IP address of the server. You can think of DNS as a kind of phone book, which links each site to your IP.

The IP address is unique on each server and each domain leads to a specific IP. It is by virtue of this that we never find two different websites with equal URLs. If this were not the case, a number of different addresses could refer users to the same site.

As stated before, this is one of the main functions of DNS, but it is not the only one. It is also a hierarchical (though limited) database, which can store (almost) any type of data, for almost any purpose.

In order to be able to translate the addresses entered into the corresponding IP number, there are several DNS servers around the world. To be precise are 13 and without them, the internet would not work. Of these, 10 are located in the United States of America, one in Asia and two in Europe. In order to increase the installed base of these servers, replicas have been created located all over the world, including the United States, since 2003.

Due to the size of the internet, storing all domain-IP pairs in a single DNS would be unfeasible, for reasons such as reliability, traffic volume, distance, and database maintenance. Imagine if the only DNS server failed, the internet would be unavailable all over the world! So it is not possible to trust the service to just one. Even more, so that he would have to handle DNS requests from the entire planet! It would certainly generate traffic congestion. Besides, it would not be like him to be close to all people, much of which would be far away, which would cause delays. You would also need to update the database more often because of the sheer amount of information stored in it.

DNS servers that accelerate navigation

By default, we use the DNS service offered by the access provider or the company responsible for our internet connection. However, it is not necessary to use it. Often they become congested or have some safety problem. This is because it is a great job to be able to translate all the names that the browser sends into IPs through which the site can be accessed. The speed of your browsing may vary greatly, depending on which DNS server your home network is configured to use.

Fortunately, you can opt for services that are available in the market and offer more performance and security, such as OpenDNS, Google Public DNS, Comodo Secure DNS and Giga DNS. Using one of these services means your browsing can be faster and safer.

In addition, many DNS servers offer detection of fake or infected sites and even parental protection to block adult content sites.

And you, do you use any of these DNS servers? What? Tell us in the comments!